"Pigasus"
New Left
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968, as a part of the broader protest against the Democratic Party and the War in Vietnam, the Youth International Party, or Yippies, satirically nominated a pig - "Pigasus" - for U.S. president. Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Dennis Dalrymple and other Yippie pranksters argued, with tongues firmly planted in cheeks, that Pigasus could "really bring home the pork" and "if we can't have him in the White House, we can have him for breakfast." The 1968 stunt typified the Yippies' absurdist, theatrical approach to protest, as well as their mix of New Left politics and counterculturalism.
The image and rhetoric of the "pig" was popular among a range of New Left radicals during the late-1960s and into the 1970s to signify illegitimate, repressive and militaristic state authority, particularly police forces and government officials. The Black Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society, Yippies and other counterculturists are most well-known for their use of the "pig" caricature, though the image and rhetoric of the "pig" was widely employed across the New Left and counterculture during this period.
Here, the image of the pig serves as a humorous theatrical tool to critique the contemporary state of U.S. politics.
Youth International Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Button
Physical Object
As Goes Burlington So Goes France
Electoral Politics
Drawing from a Doonesbury comic by Gary Trudeau, this button includes the phrase, “As goes Burlington, so goes France” as a parody of the U.S political saying dating from the nineteenth-century, “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.” As a member of the Liberty Union Party, Bernie Sanders’ successful 1981 mayoral election in Burlington, Vermont, represented the state’s liberal-left position, in contrast with the emergence of the New Right at the same time.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981
Button
Physical Object
Bernie ’86
Electoral Politics
Bernie Sanders, an Independent from the state of Vermont, ran as the third party candidate in the state's 1986 gubernatorial race between Democratic candidate Madeleine Kunin and Republican candidate Lieutenant Governor Peter Smith. Sanders lost the race; however, he remained as the Mayor of Burlington until 1989 when he was elected in 1990 to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2006, Sanders won election to the U.S. Senate from Vermont, where he still serves. In 2016, Sanders shook up the Democratic presidential nominating process by giving the heavy favorite, Hillary Clinton, a strong challenge before ultimately losing the contest.
Bernie 1986
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1986
Button
Physical Object
Bernie ’88
Electoral Politics
In 1988, Independent Burlington, Vermont, Mayor, Bernie Sanders, ran against Republican, Peter Smith, and Democrat, Paul Poirier, for the state's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Sanders lost to Smith by four percentage points in 1988, but came back to defeat Smith by sixteen points in 1990. Sanders held the House seat until 2006, when he moved on to the U.S. Senate.
Bernie 1988
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1988
Button
Physical Object
Bernie for Burlington
In 1981, Bernie Sander successfully ran for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, as an Independent, self-described "socialist," defeating Democratic Party candidate, Gordon Paquette.
Sanders served as Burlington mayor throughout the 1980s before being elected to the House of Representatives for Vermont in 1990, again as an "Independent" socialist. Sanders held Vermont's lone House seat until 2006, when he successfully won election to the Senate, where he still serves. In 2016, after joining the Democratic Party, Sanders mounted a surprisingly potent challenge to Democratic Party establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton, for the party's presidential nomination.
Bernie 1981
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981
Button
en-US
Physical Object
Bring Justice to America’s Fields in ’76
The United Farm Workers of America was founded in 1962 following the merger between Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and Cesar Chavez’s National Farm Workers Association. The new union was led by Chavez and Delores Huerta. In general, the UFWA sought to raise awareness of migrant workers’ rights and utilized nonviolent strategies such as collective bargaining, strikes, and boycotts, to secure and protect farm-workers labor rights, work hours, wages and access to health care. During the late-1960s and mid-1970s, the UFWA initiated well-known boycotts against table grapes and lettuce to protest what they viewed as unfair labor contracts and unacceptable working conditions.
United Farm Workers of America
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1976
Button
en-US
Physical Object
Free John Sinclair
New Left
Founder of the Black Panther counterpart, the White Panther Party, John Sinclair was arrested in 1969 for drug possession. Labelled a political prisoner by the New Left, Sinclair’s case inspired landmark litigation, specifically the 1972 Supreme Court ruling, U.S. vs. U.S. District Court, which stated that law enforcement officials were required to issue a warrant prior to conducting investigations on electronic media.
This particular button promotes the "Free John Sinclair Rally" at the Grand Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan, on January 24, 1970, a date proclaimed ‘International Free John Sinclair Day’ by The Fifth Estate and The Seed. The rally featured 24 acts, including MC5, The Stooges, Commander Cody, Amboy Dukes, Bob Seger. Speakers included Abbie Hoffman and attorney Ken Cockrell.
The following year, an even bigger "John Sinclair Freedom Rally" was held at the University of Michigan's Chrisler Arena on December 10, 1971, to honor of John Sinclair and to encourage an end the state ban on marijuana. John Lennon & Yoko Ono headlined this event, which also featured Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, Bob Seger, Phil Ochs, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, poet Ed Sanders, Black Panther Party chairman Bobby Seale, Chicago Seven defendant Rennie Davis, radical priest Father James Groppi, and jazz legend Archie Shepp. Sinclair was released from jail shortly after the 1971 event.
Free John Sinclair
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970
Button
Physical Object
Free Nelson Mandela ANC (S.A.)
Anti-Apartheid Movement
Created in 1980, this button represents a renewed international anti-Apartheid movement that picked up steam over the course of the eighties. The campaign pressed for "divestment" from the South African economy and demanded the release of South African political prisoners, particularly Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress (ANC), the chief opposition party. Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 for his anti-Apartheid activism and became a national and international symbol of the injustice and brutality of the racist South African regime. Ultimately, Mandela was released from prison in 1990, the African National Congress (ANC) and other opposition parties were allowed to participate in the political system and the nation's first multi-racial election took place in 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected President of a new, post-Apartheid South Africa.
New Left organizations, including the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), had protested against the Apartheid regime in South Africa since the early and mid-Sixties.
African National Congress
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1980
Button
Physical Object
Gay Liberation button
Gay Liberation
Against a black field, this button shows two pink male astrological symbols side-by-side, symbolizing male homosexuality. This button represented the gay liberation movement and its mobilization in the post-Stonewall (1969) era. An important part of the emerging gay liberation movement was a heightened public profile for gays and lesbians, as well as various public expressions of gay pride.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1969
Button
Physical Object
Jeannette Rankin Brigade
Anti-War
Description
Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to a federal office in the United States when she won a seat in the House of Representatives from Montana in 1916. Rankin was a women’s rights activist and a pacifist who opposed U.S. military interventionism. Prior to her election to Congress, Rankin worked on women’s suffrage while a student at the University of Washington. Washington State granted women the right to vote in 1910. During the mid-1910s, Rankin worked as a lobbyist for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and played a role in helping women gain the right to vote in Montana in 1914. Her 1916 election to Congress came as the nation debated U.S. involvement in the First World War, which she opposed. “I may be the first woman member of Congress,” she famously said upon her election in 1916, “but I won’t be the last. In the House, Rankin played a key role in the national women’s suffrage movement and the ultimate passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment. After gerrymandering in Montana pushed her out of Congress in 1919, Rankin moved to Georgia in the 1920s and 1930s where she continued to speak nationally on peace and in favor of child labor laws, as well as the Sheppard-Towner Act, a social welfare program that benefitted women and children.
Rankin was elected to Congress from Montana a second time in 1940, again largely in opposition to U.S. intervention in the Second World War. Most notably, on December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Rankin was the only House member to vote against the declaration of war on Japan, a vote that drew hisses from her all-male colleagues. "As a woman I can't go to war," she explained, "and I refuse to send anyone else.” Rankin abstained from voting on a declaration of war against Germany and Italy two days later. The positions effectively ended her congressional career. Asked years later if she regretted her actions, she replied, "Never. If you're against war, you're against war regardless of what happens. It's a wrong method of trying to settle a dispute.”
In the post-war period, Rankin travelled extensively, including to India several times, where she studied Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence. Largely ignored by her own generation, a rising tide of younger anti-war and women’s liberation activists during the 1960s found new inspiration in Rankin’s life and activism. In January of 1968, the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, a coalition of various women’s liberation and peace groups, organized the Jeannette Rankin Peace Parade, an anti-war march from Union Station to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. The group had formed the previous year when Rankin told a peace gathering in Atlanta on the same day that the U.S. death toll in Vietnam hit 10,000, “If we had 10,000 women who were willing to make the sacrifices that these boys had given their lives for – that we could stop the war.” The demonstration ran into opposition from Capitol Police, who invoked an 1882 law barring protests on Capitol grounds. It was the first time the law had ever been enforced. The demonstrators filed a legal grievance, but court action did not come by the day of the event. As a result, organizers decided not to go to the Capitol, which would be a violation of the law and might undermine their appeals to moderate women, wives and mothers. An estimated 5,000 women participated in the protest at Union Station, including folk singer, Judy Collins, Vel Phillips, Coretta Scott King and Dagmar Wilson, who gave speeches later at the nearby Omni Shoreham Hotel. Demonstrators held a sign stating, “End the War in Vietnam and the Social Crisis at Home.” As a former member of Congress, Rankin was allowed on the floor of the House, where she presented House Speaker, John McCormack, with a peace petition that demand Congress to withdraw troops from Vietnam, make reparations to the Vietnamese, and “refuse the insatiable demands of the military industrial complex.” She also met and spoke with Senate Leader, Mike Mansfield, who was also from Montana.
Some more militant women’s liberation advocates were displeased with the emphasis on respectability politics, mourning wives and mothers. Indeed, a Washington Post article about the protest afterward emphasized that it was “peaceful and ladylike.” In response to this emphasis, several hundred members of the Brigade, dressed in “miniskirts and high boots,” attempted to commandeer the microphone at the Omni and complained that King and Wilson had been invited to participate merely to appeal to “church women” in the demonstration. The splinter group then staged a funeral march at Arlington National Cemetery, where they paraded a dummy in “feminine getup” and “blonde curls,” to a funeral dirge “lamenting woman’s traditional role which encourages men to develop aggression and militarism to prove their masculinity.” A flyer the faction made and passed out to Rankin Brigade members stated:
“Don’t Bring Flowers...Do be prepared to sacrifice your traditional female roles. You have refused to hanky-wave boys off to war with admonitions to save the American Mom and Apple Pie. You have resisted your roles of supportive girl friends and tearful widows, receivers of regretful telegrams and worthless medals of honor. And now you must resist approaching Congress playing these same roles that are synonymous with powerlessness. We must not come as passive suppliants begging for favors, for power cooperates only with power. We must learn to fight the warmongers on their own terms, though they believe us capable only of rolling bandages. Until we have united into a force to be reckoned with, we will be patronized and ridiculed into total political ineffectiveness. So if you are really sincere about ending this war, join us tonight and in the future.”
Jeannette Rankin Brigade
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1967 or early-1968
Button
Physical Object
National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights
Gay Liberation
This button shows an image of the U.S. Capitol Building along with a pink flag containing the astrological symbols for male and female homosexuality against a black field. This button advertises the National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Washington, D.C. in 1979 where approximately 125,000 gay rights activists marched for civil and legal protection.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1979
Button
Physical Object
Remember Bobby Sands
Irish Nationalism
In 1981, Bobby Sands, a leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, died along with nine others while on a hunger strike during his imprisonment at the HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland. As an advocate for a free Ireland as well as prisoner rights, Sands and his fellow prisoners at HM Prison Maze sought to be categorized as political prisoners, demanded labor rights, access to outside communication, and educational resources. The hunger strike and deaths of Sands and the others received international press, spurring a new wave of IRA recruitment and strenuous public debate around the world.
H-Block & Armagh Committee
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1980s
Button
Physical Object
Sanders for Mayor
Electoral Politics
In 1981, Bernie Sanders successfully ran for mayor of Burlington, Vermont, as an Independent, self-described "socialist," defeating Democratic Party candidate, Gordon Paquette.
Sanders served as Burlington mayor throughout the 1980s before being elected to the House of Representatives for Vermont in 1990, again as an "Independent" socialist. Sanders held Vermont's lone House seat until 2006, when he successfully won election to the Senate, where he still serves. In 2016, after joining the Democratic Party, Sanders mounted a surprisingly potent challenge to Democratic Party establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton, for the party's presidential nomination.
Bernie 1981
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1981
Button
Physical Object
See You in Chicago
New Left
This button, which reads “See You in Chicago - Aug.’68” on an orange field, advertises planned protests by anti-war and civil rights activists at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The protests degenerated into a police riot when Democratic mayor and party stalwart, Richard Daley, ordered an estimated 23,000 riot-clad police officers to attack roughly 10,000 demonstrators in and near Grant Park. The chaos outside of the convention hall, which was broadcast across the country and around the world, took place against the backdrop of growing public opposition to America’s War in Vietnam, the blossoming of the anti-war movement, increasing disillusionment with the Democratic Party and what many viewed as the slow rate of meaningful social change, as well as the shocking assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, earlier that year. The tumultuous convention resulted in the nomination of Hubert H. Humphrey and Edmund S. Muskie as his running-mate. Republican standard-bearer, Richard Nixon, won the fall election, capping one of the more unlikely political comebacks in recent U.S. history.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Button
Physical Object
Sirhan Lives
RFK Assassination
Convicted in April 1969 of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Palestinian-American Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death. In 1972, the California Supreme Court, the The People of the State of California vs. Robert Page Anderson, prohibited the use of capital punishment in the state of California on the basis of cruel and unusual punishment. This button is inscribed with the words, “Sirhan Lives,” noting the commuting of his sentence in 1972 to life imprisonment.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1972
Button
Physical Object
Smash Imperialism!
New Left
By the late-1960s, it was common for some New Left organizations and anti-war activists to talk about U.S. foreign policy as a form of "imperialism" needing to be destroyed, or "smashed," through "revolutionary action" in order to bring about the "radical change" they desired.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. late-1960s
Button
Physical Object
Statue of Liberty Couple
Gay Liberation
This button features an image of two Statues of Liberty in bright pink holding hands. The image aims to forge a link between constitutional liberties and gay liberation.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970s
Button
Physical Object
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries
Gay Liberation
Founded in New York City in 1970 as a caucus within the Gay Liberation Front, the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, or STAR, was an activist organization established by legendary civil rights activists and drag queens of color, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha Johnson, to advocate for homeless drag queens and young gay runaways. Both Rivera and Johnson were veterans of the Stonewall rebellion and the intense period of radical political organizing the proceeded it. STAR addressed the intersectionality of race and class with sexuality by emphasizing poverty and homelessness within the transgender community.
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1970
Button
Physical Object
Use Alternative Energy
Environmentalism
This button, which says, "Use Alternative Energy," depicts an outstretched hand, a cartoon sun, and a forested landscape on a yellow field with red lettering. This button illustrates the growing environmental consciousness of the long-Sixties era.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
undated
Button
Physical Object
Vote Green
Environmentalism
The environmental movement came of age in the 1970s and 1980s. Environmentalism initially emerged out of a myriad of local grassroots actions and organizations. Over time, some "Green" activists moved into electoral politics. This button was created by the national Green Party of the United States in the mid-1980s. In addition to environmentalism, the Green Party also advocated economic justice, racial equality and women's liberation.
Green Party of the United States
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1984
Button
Physical Object
Vote Pig
New Left
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968, as a part of the broader protest against the Democratic Party and the War in Vietnam, the Youth International Party, or Yippies, satirically nominated a pig - "Pigasus" - for U.S. president. Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Dennis Dalrymple and other Yippie pranksters argued, with tongues firmly planted in cheeks, that Pigasus could "really bring home the pork" and "if we can't have him in the White House, we can have him for breakfast." The 1968 stunt typified the Yippies' absurdist, theatrical approach to protest, as well as their mix of New Left politics and counterculturalism.
The image and rhetoric of the "pig" was popular among a range of New Left radicals during the late-1960s and into the 1970s to signify illegitimate, repressive and militaristic state authority, particularly police forces and government officials. The Black Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society, Yippies and other counterculturists are most well-known for their use of the "pig" caricature, though the image and rhetoric of the "pig" was widely employed across the New Left and counterculture during this period.
Here, the campaign-style "Vote Pig" button serves as a humorous theatrical tool to critique the contemporary state of U.S. politics.
Youth International Party
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1968
Button
Physical Object
Women Women Women
Women's Liberation
This button, which reads, “Women Women Women" on a field of white with an extended female astrological sign in pink, was created during a final mass mobilization of women’s rights organizations in 1978 as a part of an effort to gain final ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment by the states. Ultimately, the campaign was unsuccessful, as a new wave of conservative political reaction turned the tide against the amendment during the next three years.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1978
Button
Physical Object